


Journey's End (The Ladies' Choice Remix)

by pipisafoat



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Genderfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-29
Updated: 2011-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipisafoat/pseuds/pipisafoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Does this happen often?" The Doctor looked up in time to catch the leer Jack was sending his way. "Not that your last body wasn't nice, but damn."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Journey's End (The Ladies' Choice Remix)

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler alert! This story draws heavily on the episode Journey's End, including much of the dialog. Thus, The Stolen Earth will also be spoiled, and potentially any episodes before those.

The Doctor pushed himself to his knees and looked up into Rose's heartbroken face. "I'm sorry. It's too late." He pushed himself upright on the TARDIS console, taking a steadying hand from Donna for a moment before pushing her towards Jack, on the other side of the room. "I'm regenerating."

Energy burst from his body where it was exposed outside of the suit, and his companions turned away from the brightness. After a long moment, he lowered his arms and nodded. "Now then. Where were we?"

The others stared at him in disbelief.

"Oh, sound a bit odd." He nodded at Rose. "Different teeth, remember?"

"That's not all that's different." She continued to stare. "On the plus side, you're ginger now?"

He frowned. "And on the side that isn't pluses? Am I fat? This suit feels rather tight." He looked down, blinked, and stared hard. "Ah."

"Does this happen often?" The Doctor looked up in time to catch the leer Jack was sending his way. "Not that your last body wasn't nice, but _damn_."

The Doctor looked down at himself again. "Would it be completely awkward if I asked one of you to show me how to wear a bra?"

* * *

  
After a not-so-quick wardrobe change ("Will you just let me do the bra this time? I'll teach you later, when the world isn't about to end!"), Donna led the Doctor back to the bridge of the TARDIS. "Ta-da!"

Jack glanced up from where he was tinkering with Rose's gun. "I could do a better makeover than that." His eyes swept over the Doctor's new clothing - a black pencil skirt and the same trainers as before, topped off with a Hawaiian print button-down shirt.

Donna glared at Jack and the Doctor equally. "Not on him, you couldn't. Or should it be her?"

The Doctor thought for a long moment. Female body, but so far, he still felt like he had a male mind. "I think 'he' will do." He attempted a pirouette. "What's wrong with my new look?"

Jack grinned. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

Donna glared at him more. "It would take even you several days to talk him out of that shirt." Jack winked at her, and she ignored him. "We don't exactly have several days at our disposal, what with saving the world and all that."

The Doctor jumped back into crisis mode at that, pushing away thoughts of his newest body. "Right! Saving the world! Where are we on that, anyway?" As he approached the TARDIS controls, everything went dark. He scrambled around flipping switches, trying to bring it back up. "They've got us! Power's gone. Some kind of chronon loop..." Dashing to the door, he opened it a crack and looked out. "The Daleks are taking us somewhere, it seems."

"There's a massive Dalek ship at the center of the planets," Jack said as the Doctor came back towards the controls. "They're calling it the Crucible. Guess that's our destination."

Donna turned to the Doctor. "You said these planets were like an engine. But what for?"

He frowned in thought, then turned abruptly. "Rose! You've been in a parallel world. That world's running ahead of this universe. You've seen the future. What was it?"

She frowned and shifted on her feet. "It's the darkness."

"The stars were going out," Donna added.

"One by one," Rose agreed. "We looked up at the sky and they were just dying. Basically, we've been building this, um, this travel machine, this. This, er, Dimension Cannon, so I c-- well, so I could..."

"What?"

"So I could come back." The Doctor grinned at her, but her answering smile looked a little strained. "Shut up," she told him. "Anyway, suddenly, it started to work, and the dimensions started to collapse. Not just in our world, not just in yours, but the whole of reality. Even the Void was dead. Something is destroying everything."

"In that parallel world, you said something about me," Donna interrupted.

Rose turned to face her. "The Dimension Cannon could measure timelines, and it's ... it's weird, Donna, but they all seemed to converge on you."

Donna shook her head. "But why me? I mean, what have I ever done? I'm a _temp_ from _Chiswick_!"

Just then, the TARDIS beeped, and the Doctor leaned over to the single working monitor. "The Dalek Crucible. All aboard."

The ship shuddered as it set down in the Crucible. "The TARDIS is secured," a robotic voice announced from outside.

"Doctor, you will step forth or die," instructed another voice.

He started towards the door. "We'll have to go out, 'cause if we don't, they'll get in."

Rose frowned. "You told me nothing could get through those doors!"

"You've got extrapolator shielding," Jack added.

The Doctor turned back to his companions, trying not to let his concern show. "Last time we fought the Daleks, they were scavengers and hybrids and mad. But this is a fully-fledged Dalek Empire, at the height of its power. Experts at fighting TARDISes. They can do anything. Right now, that wooden door is just wood."

"What about your Dimension Jump?" Jack asked Rose.

"It needs another twenty minutes, and anyway, I'm not leaving."

The Doctor nodded to Jack. Anything that would save even one person was worth it. "What about your teleport?"

"Went down with the power loss."

"Right then." He looked at his companions in turn. "All of us together. Yeah?" Jack and Rose nodded. "Donna?"

She frowned sadly. "Yeah."

"I'm sorry. There's nothing else we can do."

"Look, I know."

The Daleks outside interrupted them once again. "Surrender, Doctor, and face your Dalek masters!"

"Crucible on maximum alert!"

Rose laughed nervously, glancing at the door. "Daleks."

"Whoa, God!" Jack added.

The Doctor rolled his eyes at him before looping his arm through Donna's. "It's been good, though, hasn't it?" he asked everybody. "All of us. All of it. Everything we did." He bumped Donna with his elbow. "You were brilliant." She smiled and ducked her head shyly as he turned to Jack. "And you were brilliant." Jack grins. "And you were brilliant." Rose tried to smile, and he took a deep breath. "Blimey."

The four of them started towards the exit, with Jack leading the way. The Doctor didn't let go of Donna's arm as they all filed out of the door and into a large red-tinted room full of Daleks. The Supreme Dalek said, "Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks!" The others took up the chant.

Jack sighed dramatically. "Well, this is really interesting and everything, but--"

"Silence, Doctor!" the Supreme Dalek ordered, its eyestalk focusing on Jack.

Jack let out a short laugh and glanced back to the real Doctor, who shrugged at him. Who knew what might bring them the advantage in this little skirmish?

"Neutralize the TARDIS!" commanded the Supreme Dalek, and a forcefield sprang up around it. Jack frowned worriedly.

"Well, I for one am not afraid in the slightest," the Doctor announced. "I have absolute faith in the Doctor to get us out of this."

Jack laughed. "Who needs a TARDIS, anyway? We've all got more tricks up our sleeves than that."

"Search the Doctor's sleeves!"

Rose and Donna exchanged glances before breaking into giggles.

"Remove the females. Escort them to the Vault."

Jack jerked away from the Daleks who were probing the sleeves of his greatcoat, but hesitated with his hand on the way to his gun when the Doctor sent him a sharp glare. "Don't send them alone!" he yelled instead.

"They are the playthings of Davros now." The Supreme Dalek turned to exit the room, throwing one last command behind him: "Take the Doctor to watch them die."

* * *

  
Davros, encased in his usual metal Dalek half-shell, rolled into the middle of the room as they were escorted into the Vault. His bright blue cybernetic eye took in their group, and his wizened face sneered. "Activate the holding cells." A spotlight immediately surrounded Jack, while another, larger light contained the others. "Even when powerless, a Time Lord is best contained."

Donna reached out and touched the edge of the holding cell, which rippled with a blue light. "Still scared of him, then?" she asked, jerking her hand back and shaking it.

Davros ignored her and rolled towards Jack's cell. "It is time we talked, Doctor. After so very long."

Jack shook his head. "No, no, we're not doing the nostalgia tour. I want to know what's happening, right now, because the Supreme Dalek said Vault. As in dungeon? Cellar? Prison?" He looked around, briefly pausing on the Doctor, who nodded encouragingly. "You're not in charge of the Daleks at all, are you? They've got you locked away down here in the basement like, what, a servant?"

"Slave," Rose added.

"Court jester," suggested the Doctor.

Davros made an angry noise. "We have ... an arrangement."

"No, I've got the word!" Donna crowed. "You're the Daleks' pet!"

Davros moved towards the larger cell. "So very full of fire, all of you." He stopped in front of Rose. "And to think you crossed entire universes, striding parallel to parallel to find him again."

"Leave her alone," Jack growled.

"She is mine, to do with as I please."

Rose folded her arms across her chest. "Then why am I still alive?"

"You must be here. It was foretold. Even the Supreme Dalek would not dare to contradict the prophecies of Dalek Caan." Davros raised a hand, and a light came on over another creature, exposed inside a standard Dalek metal casing.

"So cold and dark, fire is coming, the endless flames..." Dalek Caan spoke in a sing-song voice, tentacles waving without purpose around its misshapen body.

"What is that thing?" Rose whispered to nobody in particular.

The Doctor leaned towards her to answer. "You've met before. The last of the Cult of Skaro. But it flew into the Time War, unprotected."

"Very intelligent, for a human and a female." Davros looked at them speculatively before turning to focus on Jack once more. The Doctor took advantage of the reprieve to beckon Rose and Donna closer. "Caan did more than that. He saw time, its infinite complexity and majesty, raging through his mind. And he saw you. All of you."

"We've got to move soon," the Doctor whispered to his cellmates.

Dalek Caan giggled. "This I have foreseen, in the wild and the wind. The Doctor will be here, as witness to Davros and all Daleks, at the end of everything. The Doctor and his precious Children of Time." It giggles again. "And one will die!"

"No!" Jack flung himself at the walls of his cell, only to jump back immediately, hissing in pain. "You won't kill any of us! You can't!"

"While he's distracted with Jack," the Doctor continued quietly, as Jack caught sight of the whispering.

"Oh, that's it! The anger. The fire. The rage of a Time Lord who butchered millions. There he is! Why so shy? Show your companions. Show them your true self. Dalek Caan has promised me that, too."

Dalek Caan waved his tentacles again. "I have seen. At the time of ending, the Doctor's soul will be revealed." Its misshapen eyes seemed almost to wink at the travelers.

"Yeah? What does that mean?" Jack asked, aborting Davros's turn towards the other holding cell.

"We will discover it together. Our final journey. Because the ending approaches; the testing begins."

The Doctor kept whispering. "It's not great, but it's the only plan I've got."

"Testing of what?" Jack glared at Davros.

"The reality bomb. Behold, the apotheosis of my genius!" He flicked a switch and waved a hand towards a holographic screen, on which a large, circular, green device was descending towards a crowd of people.

"Testing calibration of Realtiy Bomb!" announced the Supreme Dalek over the Crucible's speakers. "Firing in ten reels. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five."

The Doctor stopped talking as the screen shifted to show the planets, starting to glow white. "That's Z-Neutrino energy ... flattened by the alignment of the planets into a single string." The Doctor turned in horror away from the screen. "No! Davros! Davros, you can't! You can't! No!"

"Two. One. Zero." The screen shifted back to the crowd of prisoners just in time to watch them dissolve into atoms.

"Test completed."

There was silence for a long moment.

"Doctor?" Rose whispered, still staring at the piles of dust on the screen. "What happened?"

Davros answered for him. "Electrical energy, Miss Tyler. Every atom in existence is bound by an electrical field. The Reality Bomb cancels it out. Structure falls apart. That test was focused on the prisoners alone. Full transmission will dissolve every form of matter."

"Stars are going out...." Rose shivered and pressed into the comforting hug Donna offered her.

"The twenty-seven planets," Jack said quietly. "They become one vast transmitter. Blasting that wavelength...."

"Across the universe." Davros rolled towards him, turning his back on the others. "Never stopping, never faltering, never fading. People and planets and stars will become dust, and the dust will become atoms, and the atoms will become... nothing. And the wavelength will continue, breaking through the Rift at the heart of the Medusa Cascade into every dimension, every parallel, every single corner of creation! This is my ultimate victory, Doctor! The destruction of reality itself!"

The voice of the Supreme Dalek crackled over the speakers once more. "Prepare for universal detonation! The fleet will gather at the Crucible! All Daleks will return to shelter from the cataclysm! We will become the only life forms in existence!"

"No!" Jack threw himself at the wall of his cell.

"Continue to fight and you will die, Doctor," Davros said. "You cannot regenerate as long as we hold you."

"Aw, now that's just not fair," the Doctor said from the other cell. "You've already separated him from the TARDIS and locked him in a different cell from his friends. Now you're saying the cell he's in will kill him?"

"The energy walls are deadly to Time Lords?" Jack asked.

"Your walls will kill you and prevent your regeneration."

"And my companions?"

"Their cell will only hold and incapacitate. Their deaths are reserved for my pleasure, and your torture."

The Doctor and Jack shouted in anger and disbelief. Darvos ignored them both as a beep sounded.

"This message is for the Dalek Crucible, repeat, can you hear me?" Martha Jones appeared on the screen where they had previously watched the prisoners disintegrate.

Davros turned towards the screen. "It begins as Dalek Caan foretold."

"The Children of Time will gather around the Daleks. And one of them will die!"

"Stop saying that!" Jack snapped.

"Behold, the Doctor, powerless as my prisoner." Davros waved a hand towards Jack, who winked at Martha. "State your intent."

Martha nodded subtly to Jack. "I've got the Osterhagen Key," she said, holding it in view of the screen. "Leave this planet and its people alone, or I'll use it."

"What's an Osterhagen Key?" Donna asked.

"There's a chain of twenty-five nuclear warheads, placed in strategic points beneath the Earth's crust. If I use the key, they detonate and the Earth gets ripped apart."

"What!" the Doctor yelled. "Who invented that!? Well, someone called Osterhagen, I suppose."

"The Osterhagen Key is to be used if the suffering of the human race is so great, so without hope, that this becomes the final option." Her face was grim but determined.

Jack glanced at the Doctor before replying, clearly aware of the Doctor's view on the matter even as he thought about his own. "Martha, are you insane? That's never an option!"

Her eyes flicked over them all briefly. "Don't argue with me, Doctor! It's more than that. Now, I reckon the Daleks need these twenty-seven planets for something, but what if it becomes twenty-six? What happens then? Daleks? Would you risk it?"

"Oh, she's good," Rose said quietly to the Doctor.

"She's brilliant," he returned as a second screen appeared in the room, showing Sarah Jane, Mickey, and Jackie.

"Calling all Daleks. Are you receiving me?" Sarah Jane lifted what looked to be a diamond into the air. "Call off detonation, or I'll set this thing off!"

"Oh my god, that's my mum!" Rose exclaimed.

"And Mickey," the Doctor added.

"Sarah Jane, is that a Warp Star?" Jack asked, sounded awed.

She nodded. "I've got it wired into the mainframe. I break this shell, the entire Crucible goes up. We saw what happened to the prisoners."

"Impossible," Davros said slowly. "That face ... after all these years."

"Davros? It's been quite a while. Sarah Jane Smith, remember?" she spat at him.

He nearly cackled with pleasure. "Oh, this is meant to be! The Circle of Time is closing. You were there, on Skaro, at the very beginning of my creation."

"And I've learnt how to fight since then!" She gestured with the Warp Star. "You let all of them go, or this gets opened. I'll do it! Don't imagine I wouldn't."

"Now that's what I call a ransom!" Jack grinned at her.

"And the prophecy unfolds," Davros announced. "The Doctor's soul is revealed. See him! See the heart of him! The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth, Doctor." He rolled in front of Jack, who raised his eyebrows. "You take ordinary people and fashion _them_ into weapons. Behold your Children of Time, transformed into murderers. I made the Daleks, Doctor. You made this."

"Aw, they're just trying to help." Jack grinned.

Davros hesitated, the flippant answer unexpected.. "Already, I have seen them sacrifice today, for their beloved Doctor." He looked hard at Jack. "The Earth woman, who fell opening the Subwave Network."

"Who was that?" the Doctor whispered to Rose.

"Never mind that now," she whispered back. "We need to make our move while he's distracted with Jack."

"Who--"

"Doctor!" Donna hissed at him. "We are out of time. Earth is out of time."

"This is going to hurt," he warned them.

"Shut up," Rose and Donna said together, leaning on the wall of their cell hard, two feet of space between them. The energy crackled and gathered where they touched it. "Go!"

He jumped through the space between them, where the concentration of the containment energy was less. As he grit his teeth against the pain, the barrier gave way, and he saw Martha's eyes follow him for a fraction of a second before snapping back on Davros carefully.

"The Doctor," Davros said, as though presenting him to the audience on the screens, waving a hand grandly at Jack. "The man who keeps running, never looking back, because he dare not, out of shame. This is my final victory, Doctor. I have shown you ... yourself."

The Doctor watched as Jack clenched his teeth and glared at Davros, not giving him the satisfaction of an answer. He nodded approval of the man's reaction and pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket as he ducked behind a control panel, unnoticed except for Martha, Rose, and Donna.

"Enough!" declared the Supreme Dalek over the speakers. "Engage defense zero-five."

Martha lifted the Osterhagen Key. "It's the Crucible or the Earth."

"Transmat engaged," replied a Dalek voice, and a moment later, all of the people on the screens are in the Vault as well.

"Don't move!" Jack yelled. "All of you, stay still!" He shook his head as Martha's eyes flicked back towards where the Doctor had stuck his head around the panel.

"Guard them!" Davros ordered as two Daleks entered the room. The Doctor snatched his head back out of sight and got to work on the controls. "On your knees, all of you. Surrender!"

Jack nodded when they hesitated. "Do as he says."

"Mum," Rose moaned quietly. "I told you not to!"

"Yeah, but I couldn't leave you," Jackie said back, just as quietly, as she lowered herself to her knees slowly.

The Doctor set the control panel's cover on the ground, cursing the extra seconds it took to be silent. He would need all the time he could get to pull a rescue out this time. The screwdriver glowed and buzzed quietly as he started pulling wires from where they were and reconnecting them elsewhere.

"The final prophecy is in place," Davros announced. "The Doctor and his children, all gathered as witnesses. Supreme Dalek, the time has come! Now ... detonate the Reality Bomb!"

"Activate planetary alignment field!" As the Supreme Dalek's voice rings through the speakers, the screens shift to show the planets outside, once again starting to glow. "Universal Reality Detonation in 200 rels."

The Doctor's hand shook as he soldered two wires together, and he took a deep breath and forced himself to slow down just a tiny bit more, glad that he hadn't damaged anything necessary that time. However, a small sound had been made, and the Doctor thought he could hear Davros coming towards him. He caught Donna's eye accidentally, and she swallowed hard and nodded infinitesimally to him.

"You can't do this, Davros!" she called out suddenly. "Listen to the Doctor. Just stop!"

"Nothing can stop the detonation, nothing and noone!" His laugh was insane, but it was going back in the opposite direction. "How does it feel to be helpless, Doctor?"

The Doctor looked around to see Davros as he rolled as close to Jack's holding cell as he could get without touching the walls of it himself. Jack opened his mouth, face angry, when he suddenly froze. "That's...."

Davros spun to look where Jack's eyes were stuck. The TARDIS was sitting in the Vault, quietly unassuming. "Impossible!"

The Doctor pointed his screwdriver at the TARDIS, activating an old emergency scenario. An image of himself in his ninth regeneration appeared just outside of the door. "This is emergency program one. Rose, now listen, this is important. If this message is activated...."

"Exterminate!" One of the Daleks guarding Martha and the others fired on the hologram as it continued talking. The Doctor grinned and ducked behind the panel again, able to work much faster with the sounds from the other side of the Vault drowning out his tinkering.

"Brilliant!" he heard from Rose, and ginned even bigger.

"Do not--"

"Exterminate!" There was the unmistakable sound of a Dalek exploding as the recording reached its end, and the Doctor just barely managed to catch a falling scrap of metal in the silence that followed.

"Hologram!" announced a Dalek, presumably the one that had just blown up another. "Time Lord treachery!"

"Detonation in twenty rels!" proclaimed the Supreme Dalek over the speakers. "Nineteen."

"You know, I was wrong about your warriors, Davros," Jack said conversationally. "Well, not about the part where you're not in charge, that's clearly true. But they're not fearsome fighting machines. They're pathetic and feeble-minded robots!"

"Exterminate!" Davros shouted, and with the weapon discharging and human screaming that followed, the Doctor clattered his way through the rest of the rewiring.

"Behold!" Davros announced. "The last of the mighty Time Lords, struck down by the indomitable Daleks, prevented from even regenerating by our superior technology!"

"Nine ... Eight ... Seven...."

"Stand witness, humans! Your strategies have failed. Your hero has fallen. The end of the universe is come!"

"Three ... Two ... One...."

The countdown stopped suddenly, and the holographic screen displaying the glowing planets disappeared as an alarm began to sound. The Doctor stood up from behind the control panel. "Thanks, Jack."

Jack sighed loudly and stood up. "I really hate dying for you, Doctor. I really hate dying at all."

"What treachery is this!" Davros demanded. Everyone except Martha gaped at him as well.

"Ah, see, I'm the Doctor, and that's Jack, a human who has a hard time staying dead," the Doctor explained. "And what's happening now is...." He flipped a switch on the top of the controls. "Closing all Z-Neutrino relay loops using an internalized synchronous back-feed reversal loop."

"System in shutdown!"

"Detonation negative!"

The Supreme Dalek's voice drowned out the others' protests. "Explain! Explain! Explain!"

Davros lifted his hand, and a beam of energy started to arc out of his finger and towards the Doctor, who hit a button. The energy reversed and ran back into Davros. "A little bio-electric dampening field with a retrogressive arc inversion never hurt anyone. Well, except you." He shrugged.

"Exterminate her!" Davros yelled, and the Doctor looked around in confusion before looking back down at his own body.

"Oh, come on!"

"Exterminate! Exterminate!" The Daleks began to turn to face the Doctor.

He slapped another button and then crossed his arms. "Just because I have breasts does not mean that I'm a woman! Or that you should exterminate me!"

"Weapons non-functional," reported a Dalek.

"Macrotransmission of a K-filter wavelength blocking Dalek weaponry in a self-replicating energy blindfold matrix. Let me know when you're tired of the explanations."

Davros roared wordlessly and advanced on the Doctor. "Female treachery!"

The Doctor flipped a switch and waved a hand at Jack. "Holding cells deactivated; do I have to do all the work here?"

"Stop them! Get her away from the controls!"

The Daleks stopped attempting to fire their jammed weapons and turned to come towards the Doctor. "Oh, all right," he said, turning a knob, and they began to skid along the floor in the direction they were going. "Watch out," he warned as one headed towards Sarah Jane and Mickey.

"On it," Mickey said, bracing himself and giving the Dalek a hard push in the opposite direction.

"Ha! Fantastic!" Jack grabbed the one nearest him and sent it careening into Davros, stopping him just short of the Doctor.

"System malfunction!"

"Motor casing interference!"

"What is happening?" The Supreme Dalek's voice sounded as though he were sliding unstoppably as well, wherever he was. "Explain!"

"Well, come on, Donna!" the Doctor said, holding a hand towards her as Jack jumped on top of a Dalek and let Rose and Martha push him back and forth between them. "We've got twenty-seven planets that _you_ found to send home. Care to do the honors?"

She grinned. "You're brilliant."

"And you're surprisingly unharmed for having taken the brunt of the energy cell," he said, studying her carefully. "I would have expected at least some minor paralysis, maybe even a burn or two."

She waved her fingers in his face. "All better! Well, a bit tingly, but everything works again. How do we send everyone home?"

"Stop this at once!" Davros had regained his control and was advancing on Donna and the Doctor.

"Stay back, Davros!" the Doctor yelled.

"You will desist!" He continued to advance on them.

"Jack!" Mickey skidded through the doorway and threw a massive gun to the man still astride a malfunctioning Dalek. Jack grabbed the gun, flipped it easily into his grasp, and shot Davros cleanly even as his Dalke mount continued to spin.

"Nice timing, Mickey Mouse!" Jack saluted sloppily, and they grinned at each other. "Alright, let's get these things out of the way." He kicked a Dalek out a door and into the corridor, where it glided helplessly away, still spinning. The others followed his lead, and the room was soon emptied.

"Right!" The Doctor rubbed his hands together. "Activate Magnetron." He pointed at a button, and Donna hit it enthusiastically. "Ready? And reverse!" She flipped a switch at his direction, and the screen reappeared in the room. "Off you go, Clom!" he said as the first planet disappeared.

"Back home, Adipose Three!" Donna grinned as another popped away. The others moved towards the control console, watching as they worked.

"Shallacatop, Pyrovillia, and the Lost Moon of Poosh, sorted!" They shared a high five over the console.

"Is anyone going to tell us what's going on?" Martha asked, propping an elbow on the control panel.

"Careful that button!" the Doctor admonished.

She moved her arm. "So you really are the Doctor."

"A female Doctor," Sarah Jane marveled.

"I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now," Jack stage-whispered, getting an elbow from Rose for his efforts.

She turned to the Doctor. "I thought Dalek Caan and his prophecy ... He said one of us would die."

He grinned. "Ah, Rose, Rose, Rose. He was careful to lead us to believe that, but with Daleks and us all standing witness?" He gestured towards Davros. "Well, one of us did die."

Dalek Caan giggled from the corner, startling everyone. "The female Doctor triumphs."

"Yes, about that." The Doctor came round the console and glared at Dalek Caan. "Since when can the UNA of a Time Lord be rewritten such that one could regenerate female?"

"Only by one who can remember their alternate past," Dalek Caan answered, tentacles flipping haphazardly.

The Doctor pointed at him. "You've been manipulating the timelines for ages! Getting Donna Noble to the right place at the right time to make sure she could regender me!"

"This would always have happened. I only helped, Doctor."

"I will descend to the Vault!" The Supreme Dalek announced, and moments later, it appeared. Jack and Mickey cocked their guns at it but went unnoticed. "You betrayed the Daleks!"

"I saw the Daleks. What we have done, throughout time and space. I saw the truth of us, Supreme, and I decreed, 'No more!'"

"The Vault will be purged! You will all be exterminated!" The Supreme Dalek fired on the control panel, and the humans all dove away from it.

"Exterminate this!" Jack blasted the Supreme Dalek as it swung around to shoot at him. As everyone stared at the smoking hole where its head used to be, the Doctor came back over to examine the control panel.

"Oh, we've lost the Magnetron! And there's only one planet left - guess which one? But we can use the TARDIS...." He hesitated. "Donna, watch this readout. We'll have to keep the Earth's stability intact with the other planets gone. Got to keep the atmospheric shell between 7 and 8 - use this dial. I can route the controls into the TARDIS, but it'll take a minute while I do it."

He set her hand on the dial in question and dashed into the TARDIS. Pausing in front of the controls, he glared down at his chest and readjusted the bra inexpertly.

"Here, let me...." Rose's hands were cold, but whatever she did was infinitely more comfortable than before.

"Thanks." He grabbed her hand as she tried to walk away. "Rose ... look at me." She slowly raised her gaze to his. "This--"

"Save the Earth, Doctor," she interrupted.

He studied her face for a short moment, then nodded. "Hold this down," he told her, indicating a blue lever. When it was secure, he went to the other side of the control column and patched the TARDIS through the Dalek interface and directly into the atmospheric control of Earth. "Got it!" he yelled through the still-open door, fiddling with the last of the controls to make the control automatic.

The TARDIS shook suddenly as something exploded outside. "What--" The Doctor flipped one final switch and then dashed out the door to find Donna holding down a button at the other side of the half-ruined control panel. "What have you done?"

"She has fulfilled the prophecy!" Dalek Caan announced. "The female has brought the end to the Daleks!"

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" the Doctor asked furiously. "No, just ... Get in the TARDIS! Everyone! All of you, inside! Run! In! In! In!" As they sprinted for the ship, the explosions increased in frequency. "Dalek Caan! Come with me! This doesn't have to be the end! I can save you!"

"This I have foreseen," Dalek Caan answered, all traces of insanity suddenly gone from its voice. "Long have you been known as the Destroyer of Worlds, but today, you are their savior. Another has taken the destruction from you." The Dalek began to let out a high pitched noise, and the Doctor dashed into the TARDIS, closing the door just as Caan exploded, splattering the door loudly.

"Off we go!" he said, forcing cheer into his voice. The TARDIS shook violently as they took off, and he pulled up a monitor just in time to watch the entire Crucible explode.

Sarah Jane leaned over next to him, and he was shocked to realize that she was taller than him now. "But what about the Earth? It's stuck in the wrong part of space!"

He shook his head violently to refocus his thoughts. Still a crisis situation. "I'm on it. He spun a dial on the side of the monitor. "Torchwood Hub! This is the Doctor. Are you receiving me?"

"Loud and clear! Is Jack there?"

"Can't get rid of him!" The Doctor winked over his shoulder, and Jack laughed.

"I thought you were a bloke."

He frowned. "I was. Never mind that. What's your name?"

"Gwen Cooper."

"Tell me, Gwen Cooper, are you from an old Cardiff family?"

She looked a bit taken aback by the question. "Yes, all the way back to the 1800s!"

The Doctor exchanged a grin with Rose. "Yeah, thought so. Spatial genetic multiplicity."

"Oh yeah!" Rose laughed.

"Funny old world ... Now, Torchwood, I want you to open up that Rift Manipulator. Send all the power to me."

Ianto nodded firmly. "Doing it now, ma'am. Sir. Ma'am?"

Jack laughed again. "We haven't even figured that one out yet, Ianto."

"What's the power for?" Gwen interrupted.

"It's a tow-rope! Now then, Sarah, what was your son's name?"

She sighed in relief. "Luke, he's called Luke. And the computer's Mr Smith."

The Doctor spun the dial again. "Calling Luke and Mr Smith! This is the Doctor. Come on Luke, shake your leg!"

A boy ran towards them on the screen. "Is Mum there?"

"Oh, she's fine and dandy--"

"Yes! Yes!" She laughed and threw her arms around the Doctor, grinning at her son.

He hugged her back. "Now, Mr Smith, I want you to harness the rift power and loop it around the TARDIS, you got that?"

The computer answered, "I regret I will need remote access to TARDIS base code numerals."

The Doctor frowned and looked down to the controls, already working busily. "Oh, blimey, that's gonna take a while."

"No, no, no, let me!" Sarah Jane pushed him to the side gently. "K-9! Out you come!"

The metal dog came onscreen beside the boy. "Affirmative, Mistress!"

The Doctor stopped his work. "Oh, good dog! K-9, give Mr Smith the base code!"

"Master!" The dog advanced on the computer and extended a probe out to it. "TARDIS base code now being transferred. The process is simple!"

The Doctor makes a pleased noise as the code appears on Mr Smith's screen. "Now then, you lot!" He circled the console, pointing to various levels and buttons. "Sarah, hold that down. Mickey, you hold that. 'Cause, you know why this TARDIS is always rattling about the place? Rose, that, there. It's designed to have six pilots. And I had to do it single handed. Martha, keep that level. But not any more! Jack, there you go, steady that. Now we can fly this thing... No, Jackie, no, no, not you, don't touch anything, just... stand back." He takes Jackie by the shoulders and gently pushes her to the side. "Like it's meant to be flown! We've got the Torchwood Rift looped around the TARDIS by Mr Smith, and we're gonna fly Planet Earth back home!" He looks at all of them assembled, takes his own place at the most complicated controls, and grins. "Right then! Off we go!" With the pull of one last lever, the TARDIS starts to move, and Jackie steps up behind him to watch the monitor: the Earth being towed back where it belongs.

* * *

  
The TARDIS set down in a park on Earth once the planet was back where it belonged. The door opened, and the Doctor followed Sarah Jane out. "It all looks right," he commented.

Sarah Jane smiled. "You know, you act like such a lonely man ... person. But look at you. You've got the biggest family on Earth!" She hugs him, and he embraces her in return, noticing for the first time how different it felt with his new body.

She backed away suddenly. "Gotta go! He's only fourteen. It's a long story." The Doctor grinned at her and waved as she started away. "And thank you!"

"You're welcome," he whispered to himself, turning as the door opened again.

"Hey, Doc, any chance of a quick repair for the road?" Jack smiled winningly and held out his wrist computer.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I told you, no teleport." He pointed the sonic screwdriver at it anyway and let it work its magic.

"You ever need a proper introduction to that body--" Jack began.

"I'll ask someone who's had one like it, thanks."

Jack grinned. "You can't blame a guy for trying."

The Doctor shook his head and ignored Jack. "And Martha? Get rid of that Osterhagen thing, eh? Save the world one more time."

She nodded. "Consider it done." The two of them saluted. He hesitated for a minute, surprised, then returned the salute. Jack took Martha's hand and led her down the road.

"You know, I'm not sure about UNIT these days," he heard the Captain say to her. "Maybe there's something else you could be doing."

He watched them for a moment, then turned sharply towards the TARDIS door. "Oi, where are you going?"

Mickey shrugged. "Well, I'm not stupid. I can work out what happens next. And hey, I had a good time in that parallel world, but my gran passed away. Nice and peaceful. She spent her last years living in a mansion. There's nothing there for me now, certainly not Rose."

The Doctor snorted. "Not stupid? I can't work out what happens next. But it's your choice. What will you do?"

"Anything! Brand new life. Just you watch." Mickey grinned and offered a fistbump. "See you, boss." He turned and took off at a quick jog down the sidewalk. "Hey, you two!"

The Doctor watched as they hugged and continued off to their new lives.

"Just time for one last trip," he said, heading back in the TARDIS. "Darlig Ulv Stranden."

"You're taking us back to the other universe?" Rose asked.

He nodded. "You've got a little brother there, yeah? Family's got to stick together."

She studied him. "You're just as important. You're the reason I came back - the reason we all came back! What are you left with when you send everyone away to their families? Where do you go when you send us all away from you? It's not like I'm leaving _my_ child if I don't go back. And Mum's not alone anymore. So yeah, back to Norway - but don't you think for one second that I'm letting you leave without me. I'll chain myself to the TARDIS if I have to. No version of you gets to run around alone." She paused long enough to glance over at Donna, whom the Doctor had been ignoring ever since they left the Crucible. "I don't know what's going to happen between you and Donna. If you want me to go to a different room while it happens, I don't care. I don't care if it's two of us or three of us or twenty of us. I spent all that time trying to find you, and I'm not going back now."

The Doctor hesitated, then turned away. "Bad Wolf Bay it is."

"Did you listen to a word I just said!" Rose yanked on his shoulder, pulling him around as the TARDIS took off. "Do you ever listen to a single bloody word that anyone--"

He slapped a hand over her mouth. "Your mum," he said quietly.

"Oh." She deflated a bit. "Well, good, then."

"And then we travel. Hey-- the lost moon of Poosh isn't lost anymore. Maybe we could go see it where it actually belongs?" The proposal came out a lot more questioning than he intended, and he winced internally. "Lots to see if you don't like that one. Felspoon! What a good name. It's got mountains that sway in the breeze. Mountains that move, can you imagine?"

Rose laughed, and the tension melted away. "Sounds a bit more interesting than the found moon of Poosh, really."

"Ooh, the found moon. That's such a ring to it." The Doctor grinned at her before turning to her mother. "Safe and sound, back home."

Jackie opened the TARDIS door and sighed loudly. "Ah, fat lot of good this is! Back of beyond. Bloody Norway!" She turned to Rose, exasperated. "I'm gonna have to phone your father, he's on the nursery run. I don't suppose you'll wait and say goodbye to him and Tony?"

Rose shook her head. "Tony wouldn't remember me, anyway. You'll tell him all the stories?"

"And then some. Got to make up what happens once you leave here, you know."

"She can't come back," the Doctor interrupted. "If she leaves with me, she can't come back to this universe. Nobody can." He held Rose's gaze for a long moment. "And I won't be regenerating any time soon. So if this is too much for you...." He gestured down along his body.

"You're not even human," she answered, bemused.

"But you can change back?" Jackie asked. "I mean, if you want to."

The Doctor grinned. "I can. I will. Just not yet." The TARDIS made a short sound similar to takeoff. "We've got to go."

She held up her phone. "Can you...?"

"Can't call across universes. At least, not when they're all intact." He pulled out the sonic screwdriver. "Can give you a bit of a signal boost, though, to call Pete."

"Much appreciated." Jackie handed her phone over before hugging her daughter. "You be safe, okay? And if you can't do that, be happy."

The Doctor couldn't hear Rose's whispered answer, but Jackie hugged him when she took the phone back. "You, too. And I'm sure Pete would find a way back across to your universe if you got our Rose hurt, so mind you don't."

"Jackie Tyler," he said, full of feeling, giving her the tightest hug he could manage. "Have a good life."

The TARDIS rumbled again, and she walked out, carefully shutting the door behind her.

"Last chance," he said to Rose. "The walls of the world are closing again, now that the Reality Bomb never happened. Dimensional retroclosure. I've got to go now if I'm going to make it back to our universe."

"I'm staying," she replied firmly.

"You're--"

"Very."

The Doctor grinned. "Good enough for me. Let's go home, Rose Tyler."

* * *

  
Silence reigned long after Rose's retreat to the TARDIS library. The Doctor was standing in front of the flight controls, hands braced and head dropped down; Donna was leaning against a coral strut behind him. He sighed heavily, shifted on arms that were really just a bit too short for this pose, and finally turned around. "How did you do it?" he asked quietly, folding his arms under his breasts.

"Maximized the Dalkeanium power feeds and sent them back," she answered steadily.

"How?"

Donna crossed her arms to match him. "After the modifications you made to that control panel, it was easy. Dalek Caan told me what to do, and I ... just knew how to make it happen." She met his gaze and held it despite his growing discomfort. "With or without that Reality Bomb, there were enough Daleks to slaughter the whole universe. I don't regret killing them. And I know that's why you're so upset. But it had to be done. You were the Destroyer of Worlds once, Caan said, but not anymore. Now he is, and he took himself out in the process."

"Donna...." He shook his head. "You can't even change a plug!"

"Still can't." She shrugged.

He nodded. "Come here."

She didn't budge. "Why?"

"So I can sequence your DNA."

"That is the worst line I've ever heard, and Martha told me about the first time she met you." She went anyway, and he gestured to a small point that rose out of the console.

"Let her take a sample."

Donna shuddered but pricked her finger on the point, which sank back to where it had come from. Moments later, the monitor showed numbers flying past, then beeped. The Doctor leaned in and frowned, examining the symbols.

"Wonderful," he said flatly.

"I don't speak DNA, Time Boy."

He sighed and turned towards her. "The thing about regeneration is that it's not some big random process. There are ways to influence it, even though I never really went in for all that. It's more fun if you don't know, right? But it can be done. It shouldn't, anymore, so all the better that I never cared." He paused for a second, lost in thought. "Well, there may be one or two species that I could safely hitch off of, but they don't have anything I want."

She raised one eyebrow. "And how do you influence your regeneration, anyway?"

"Right! Well, you touched me while I was regenerating, remember? Gave me some excellent hair, which would be brilliant to keep, but you somehow overwrote my UNA to regender me in the process." He caught her expectant look and nodded. "Human DNA and Time Lord DNA are fairly similar. Made of the same stuff put together nearly the same way. We're genetically compatible. Well, you are with me; I doubt I would be with any humans."

"How'd that happen?" Donna frowned. "You're a different species."

"So were your _Homo neanderthalensis_ cousins." He grinned. "Donna, you're evolving. All of you. Your planet is the third known evolution of the _Homo_ genus, as you call it, though certainly the only really successful one at this point. Gallifrey was the first." He spread his arms dramatically. " _Homo tempus dominus_ , you could call me." He frowned briefly. "Well, unless you know more Latin than I do."

"So I touched you right before you regenerated, and you stole some of my DNA, and that's why you're ... why you have a female body?" Donna laughed shortly. "But you said it shouldn't be done anymore."

He glared at her. "Oi! I didn't do it on purpose! You should have backed off when Jack told you to!" He sobered suddenly. "It has its risks. I thought that if that's what had happened, you seemed okay, I mean ... Until you said that about fulfilling the prophecy."

"So, what, genocide is a symptom of being infected with by a Time Lord?"

"How did you know to maximize the power feeds?"

She frowned. "I already said Dalek Caan told me what to do."

He sighed. "Let me rephrase. How did you know _how_ to maximize the power feeds?"

"I dunno, I just did." She shrugged. "Heat of the battle. Unlocked hidden depths."

"Can you remember what you did now?" She shrugged again. "Donna, this is important. That's knowledge you can't have. I don't mean not allowed to have - I mean physically cannot contain in your brain. If you really took my mind into your own...."

"That's what happens when I give you my DNA?" Her voice was loud and indignant.

"It was a very intimate process for Time Lords," he explained defensively. "If you cared enough about someone to want to share physical characteristics, you would also share your mind. But I don't know if that happened here, or if something else is going on. Tell me, can you remember how you maximized the power feeds?"

She looked down at the floor. "If I can, that means I have you in my head, and if I can't, it means you're going to hunt for another answer."

"Can you remember?" he insisted.

"Yes, okay?" She glared at him. "I can remember if I try hard enough, and it gives me a headache, but as soon as I stop trying, I forget it again, and then I'm fine. If this knowledge is as dangerous as you say it is, maybe that's my brain recognizing that and protecting me, so I'm fine, right?" She wound down out of the rant and asked again, just looking worried, "I'm going to be okay, right?"

He smiled gently. "Donna Noble, you are impossible. You show up in my ship out of nowhere, in your wedding dress, no less. You found me again, in the Adipose building. Your granddad. And your car! Donna, you parked your car right where the TARDIS was going to land. Dalek Caan has been manipulating the timelines for ages, drawing us together so you'd be here to ... well, to turn me female, it seems, and to download my brain so you could wipe out the Daleks. But that knowledge will kill you. Special as you are, much as your mind is fighting it, it will kill you."

"I was going to be with you." She backed up slowly, sagging against the nearest strut. "Rest of my life. Traveling. In the TARDIS. The DoctorDonna. Can we still do that?"

He looked at her sadly. "You could, but I won't let you." He pushed off the controls where he'd been leaning and walked towards her slowly. "I won't let you die like this."

"You're taking my life away from me," she protested quietly. "The good parts. The parts where I was actually living."

"So you'll get out there and live some more," he said, catching her hands. His voice sounded a little desperate as he repeated, "I won't let you die like this."

She jerked her hands free. "Not here. Not yet. Take me home first. Let me see ... Let me explain this to my mother, so she knows it's real. I don't think she'll trust you."

The Doctor mock-groaned, trying to get some levity back. "And let your grandfather see that you managed to turn me into a woman?"

* * *

  
When he finally got back to the TARDIS, Rose was sitting on a bench in the main room, flipping idly through a magazine Donna must have left behind. "Got everything sorted?" she asked without looking up.

He let out a noisy sigh and leaned back against the shut door. "Remind me never to travel with anyone who has a mother in this universe, ever again."

She looked up and grinned. "That bad?"

"Donna told her what had happened - well, part of it - and that she needed to have her memory wiped, and the woman still shrieked like it was the end of the world when I did it." He pushed off the door with a soft grunt and came up to join her. "We'd thought that maybe hearing it from Donna, before it happened, would make a difference. Apparently not."

Rose reached out and rubbed at his shoulder briefly. "Memory wipe?"

"Yeah." He waved a hand vaguely. "She downloaded my mind."

"Okay." Rose turned back to the magazine, and he looked over her shoulder. "Get your own," she said lightly, slapping at him with one hand.

"Hey, I'm allowed to look at this now." He gestured down his body. "See? Prerequisites met."

She looked him over slowly. He was still wearing what Donna had let him get away with in the middle of the earlier crisis - black pencil skirt, same practical trainers as always, and a horribly orange Hawaiian print button-down. "On second thought, please, take this magazine. Read this article and meet me in the dressing room."

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" The Doctor glanced at the magazine. "See? Floral prints with a black skirt." He jabbed a finger decisively at the page. "I'm a girl now. I can wear flowers if I want to."

"Flowers, but not--" Rose sighed heavily. "We'll have to work on this."

"You've got time." He took the magazine from her hands and dropped to the bench beside her. "Twenty tips guaranteed to get your guy hot?" He flipped a couple pages and studied an ad for mascara intently.

"Don't look at me! Not my magazine!" She held up her hands defensively. "What do you mean, I've got time?"

"I mean, I'm not going to change back just yet. And why do you need tips to get a guy hot? Can't you just turn up the thermostat?"

Rose buried her face in her hands and laughed. "Hot as in aroused, Doctor," she said, voice muffled.

"Oh!" He flipped back to the article in question, skimming it this time. "Well, that makes a lot more sense now."

"Not going to change back yet," she repeated.

"Mmhmm." He paused on an advice column. "Are these people serious?"

"Most of them. Can you change back?"

"Now I understand why Donna has such low opinions of humans." He finally shut the magazine and looked up at her. "I know that it can be done, I just haven't worked out the specifics yet. Does it bother you? This body?"

She shrugged. "It's a little weird."

"Good weird, bad weird, don't know yet weird?"

She shrugged again. "Weird weird. Not particularly good, but not really bad, either. I guess it's don't know yet weird. Takes some getting used to, weird. Been a bit busy saving the universe for any of that to happen yet."

He nodded. "It's been a long day. Why don't you--"

"I want to talk about this," she interrupted. "If I don't do it now...."

"Alright." He stood up, pulled her with him, and led her deeper into the TARDIS. "I'll think of something, and I'll change back, and if it bothers you that I look like this, I can try to do it faster than I would otherwise. What else did you want to know?" He stopped in front of a door and frowned at it. "Couch or snack?"

"Snack." She followed him into the kitchen and dropped into a chair at the table. "Is this something that happens very often?"

"It's never happened to me before." He frowned at the cupboard before dragging a chair over to climb on.

Rose stood up to steady him as he reached into the back of the top shelf. "But it's common enough that you know you can change back."

"Sort of...." His voice trailed off as he found what he was looking for and handed down the pack of biscuits. "Donna rearranged," he explained. "Anyway, yes, it has been known to happen before, but it took a lot of genetic finagling that clearly was not the case this time. If it comes down do it, I can turn the TARDIS into a genetics lab and work it out that way."

"How did it happen?"

"Some sort of bizarre meta-crisis. Donna touched me just before I regenerated, but the energies were already flowing, and she got caught. I traded half my mind for some of her genetic makeup. That was a fairly common way to try to steer regenerations, but it should only affect my DNA. Dalek Caan, if you remember, said it changed my UNA because of her particular timeline. Meddling little beast." He popped a biscuit in his mouth and raised an eyebrow at her.

She smiled and shook her head fondly. "Not looking for a whole biology lesson here, but what's UNA?"

He swallowed his mouthful. "DNA and UNA together make up your version of DNA. My DNA changes with every regeneration; the UNA stays the same. It's how I remember things when the regeneration makes me a whole new ... person. And it's how I - usually - stay the same sex, color, other general things like that." He grinned. "Detail-free enough for you?"

"Perfect." She stole a biscuit but paused before taking a bite. "So Donna touched you and changed your UNA, which is how you've got this female body, even though you seem pretty well the same otherwise."

"Not the hair; did you see the hair?"

"I did see the hair." Her smile turned into a grin. "The answer seems pretty simple to me," she said. "Don't you just need to touch a guy in the middle of your next regeneration?"

He frowned. "He wouldn't change my UNA, and besides, it's not like I can control what bits of him I get." He mock-glared when she stifled a giggle with another biscuit.

"So you need to find someone else who can change your UNA and hope for the best. What's the criteria?"

" _One who can remember their alternate past_ , Dalek Caan said." The Doctor sighed. "I have no idea. I wish I could just go back and use my previous regeneration. Like you said, nothing but the UNA and the hair's changed. Nearly guaranteed a reset."

"But you won't cross your own timeline."

He shook his head. "And anyone else who would stand a chance to fix me would probably die from it."

They sat in silence for a minute, munching on the biscuits, before Rose sits up straighter and grins. "Jack."

"What about him?"

"He can't die. Right?"

The Doctor grinned for a short moment, but then it fell. "He wouldn't change it, if Caan was right. Alternate past. He's got the year that never happened, but if that worked, Martha could have just as easily been the one who changed me."

"She wasn't there."

"She could have been. Caan was messing with timelines all along; he could have made her be the one who was there. But she wasn't." He sighed. "I'll start the research in the morning. Not sure how long it'll take until I can change back, though."

Rose reached out and covered his hand with her own. He stared for a moment, surprised at the lack of size difference. "Don't rush on my account. It doesn't bother me any more than the last time you regenerated. Just takes some getting used to. See? It's already less weird than when it first happened."

"This body is all wrong," he muttered. "I mean, it's great, it's fantastic to finally give this a go when I thought my whole life it would never happen, but I've not been this awkward in a new body since I was the equivalent of a teenager. Center of gravity and balance and size and everything is just a lot _more_ different than I'm used to."

"Finally?" She quirked an eyebrow. "You've wanted this?"

He flushed. "It's not ... I mean, I want to be male again, and I don't feel like a woman - at least, I don't think I do; I guess I don't really know what being a woman feels like - but I'm still a, a, what do you call them, sociologists? I've always been interested in the varying experiences of different people. That's why I'm a traveler. And that's why I've always, well, wondered about it."

"So the hero gig is just an accident." Rose nodded like something was finally clicking into place, and he wondered what she was thinking. "Well, you should take the time to enjoy it, then."

"I'll get used to how it handles in time," he agreed. "But it would still be nice to know that I had a plan handy when my next regeneration comes around. Probably sooner rather than later," he added with a short self-deprecating laugh. "I'm not really that great at the hero gig."

"You're fantastic." She stretched, paused halfway through, and stared at something behind him. "Okay, that's a little weird."

He twisted around to look behind him, at the hand in a jar in the corner of the counter. "Oh, that's mine." He turned back, laughter on his face. "Jack brought it back to me a while ago. 'Thought it might come in handy,' he said. Any excuse for a pun."

"I'm surprised he didn't insinuate something."

"He did that first. The pun was something of a finishing touch. Oddly seri--" He twisted abruptly and stared at the jar. "I can use it!" He jumped up, grinning at the whole room. "Just have that along in the control room, next time the regeneration energy's up, save crossing my own timeline and still get that magic touch from a handy bio-matching receptacle, namely, my hand, my hand there, my handy spare hand!" He pulled Rose out of her chair and into a brief hug before holding her at an arm's length, still grinning madly. "Remember, Christmas Day, Sycorax, lost my hand in a sword fight? That's my hand. What d'you think?"

She grinned back. "I think you're mad. And I think we must have gotten Jack out of order somewhere, if he gave you back that hand. Seems more the sort of thing he'd hang onto. A souvenir. Or ... something a little more private."

"I don't even want to know what kind of private you're thinking of." The Doctor pulled her in for another hug. "You gave me a plan. You and Jack. Fixing me right up."

She grinned and held him just as tightly to her. "That's what family's for."

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 2011 Queer_Fest. Prompt: The Doctor finally got hir female regeneration, now what?  
> As always, beta/title/cheerleading credit to [](http://firesign10.livejournal.com/profile)[**firesign10**](http://firesign10.livejournal.com/).


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